All
civilizations collapse eventually. Historians, anthropologists, and
other social scientists understand the common reasons for collapse. No
society appears to avoid this inevitable destiny.

Look back over
the past,
with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the
future, too.

- Marcus Aurelius

Once men are caught up in an event they
cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Most
of us are fascinated by stories of collapse whether it takes the form
of reading scholarly treatises on the fall of the Roman Empire or
watching Mad Max 2 (a.k.a. Road Warrior) for the sixth time. The popularity
of Jared
Diamond's recent book Collapse
as well as rekindled interest in older tomes such as Joseph A.
Tainter's The Collapse of Complex
Societies underscores this point. There is also a growing
interest
interest in tribalism as people begin to look for alternative social
and support systems as the old ways begin to show signs of breaking
down.

For these reasons, I have decided to include a list of essays and
articles on possible collapse because such an event could be triggered
by energy descent.

Let
us know about other writings which should be included here. Click
to email a link.

The
Long Road Down: Decline and the Deindustrial Future by John Michael Greer

When it comes to the future most people fall into one of two extreme
camps. There are those who envision an ever-brighter future which will
be brought about by never-ending technological innovation. Think Star Trek. Then there are those who
see an apocalyptic collapse once the oil runs out. Think Road Warrior.

In this essay John Michael Greer explains how the future will most
likely unfold based on our knowledge of previous civilizations.

"Yet an odd blindness affects attempts to make sense of our
predicament. People on all sides of the debate talk as though the
future has only two possible shapes: progress or apocalypse, either
business as usual for the foreseeable future or a catastrophic slide
into savagery and mass death. Whether the topic is global warming,
renewable energy, fossil fuel depletion, or anything else, the same
claims repeat like a broken record. One side insists that technology
will inevitably solve our problems and yield a better life for all,
while the other side brandishes worst case scenarios and talks of
millions of corpses. It should be obvious that these aren't the only
possibilities. The fact that this isn't obvious at all is worth
exploring."

"lt's
time for humanity to adopt a new myth. The current one which tells us
that growth is infinite and the solution to its own set of problems is
falling apart. Everyday fewer and fewer people believe it.'Amythia,'
the pathological lack of myths, has been diagnosed as the root cause of
any number of modern sociological and psychological evils. (1) The
irony here is not a small one, for whatever else may be at the root of
our many problems, a myth shortage is not. The loss of belief in the
central myths of Christianity and Judaism, on the part of most educated
people in the Western world, did not happen because people stopped
believing in myths. It happened because a new and more appealing myth
seized the collective imagination of the West and, as myths do,
restructured the universe of human experience in its own image.

The name of this new myth, the myth that has dominated the imagination
of the Western world for some three hundred years, is 'Progress'."

Growth
for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
- Edward Abbey